By Bashir Bello

KANO — The Management of Access Bank PLC, on Thursday, said it targets to attain 1 million banking agents by end of the year to ensure financial inclusion in some parts of the country.

The bank’s Deputy Managing Director, Chizoma Okoli made this known during a one-day customer engagement forum held in Kano.

Okoli said currently the bank has 600,000 agents but part of its strategy is to increase it to 1 million agents to ensure transactions are carried out seamlessly in every area that is financially excluded.

She said the bank is also expanding by opening offices across the globe with the most recent in Hong Kong, where it is the only African Bank to secure a licence to operate and working towards opening an office in the United States by next year.

She said the forum was to discuss and enlighten customers on the bank’s new products and services to strengthen the banks – customer relationship for a better and improved business relationship.

According to her, “Your bank has about 600,000 agents across the country and that is very critical for the North because of the geographical strength that we have in the North. We believe by the end of this year, we should get up to 1 million agents. That is so that the transactions in every area that is financially excluded will go in seamlessly. And this is one of our financial inclusion strategies. So we are going to be adding about 1 million agents by the end of this year. And that will put us on top of the list as a bank with the largest agents in the banking network.

“The Access Bank has over 61 million customers today. We have the largest customer base and we are in over 23 countries. We are the newest in Namibia, which we just opened last week. In the 23 countries, we have offices in China, India, Lebanon and recently added Hong Kong this year. And you need to know that we are the only African country that has received the license to operate in Hong Kong.

“We are also in UAE, UK and we opened in Paris last year, and guess what, by the end of this year, we will be in the Caribbean. We are hoping by next year, we will be in the United States.

“Why do we keep expanding for you, we said we want to be Africa’s gateway to the world, we want to be that bank that is making it possible for you to carry out seamless transactions between you and anywhere in Africa and as well the World. So that is why we keep seeking partnerships that will make sure that we achieve that dream for you. Last year, we signed up a partnership with MasterCard. With that, you can have distance across the over 153 countries where MasterCard exists seamlessly.

“We are doing this as our desire to continue to be innovative in creating solutions for you,” she said.

Okoli however, stated that the bank is indeed passionate about empowering women and as such 47% of the bank’s staff were women as it strives to empower women and give them a voice.

However, one of the bank’s customers, Malama Naja’atu Isah Ibrahim stated that the engagement forum has accorded her the chance to understand ways to avert being scammed by fraudsters adding that other banks should emulate Access Bank as a way of saving customer’s hard earn money.

The forum was attended by participants who were from different business communities in the state.